Climate Justice or Climate Apartheid: Interrogating three trajectories of climate colonialism

Keywords: climate apartheid, climate justice, climate colonialism
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

There is no justice in climate responses produced by the legacy systems, institutions, and ideologies of colonialism. From the violent imaginaries of climate securitization (Chaturvedi & Doyle 2015; Huq & Mochida 2018) to climate ‘solutions’ that reinforce systems of exploitation and debt bondage (Anantharajah & Setyowati 2022; Perry 2021), the dominant responses to the climate crisis remain ensnared by the hauntings of colonialism and imperialism (Sultana 2022). Indeed, few large-scale actions aimed at mitigating the climate crisis seek to achieve their goals equitably or in a way that minimizes the negative impacts on vulnerable ecosystems and populations. Furthermore, defensive actions by powerful (mostly former colonizer or imperial governments) display tendencies toward xenophobia, survivalism, and supremacist necropolitics (Stanley 2021 following Mbembé & Meintjes 2003; Walia 2021). Hope for a just and equitable climate future resides in organized activism and in everyday acts of resistance, but activism and abolition require critiques of power, collective political action, the decolonization of development (Sultana 2019). With that in mind, this paper confronts three dominant modes of climate response: securitization (of borders and resources), financialization (of exploitative mitigation and adaptation measures), and immobilization (of migrants and the climate-vulnerable). Each reflects stubborn legacies of colonial ideologies, power relations, and narratives of dehumanization. Each necessitates scholarly critique and political resistance.